An Irish Crusade-Religious Persecution-James I. and the Catholics-- The Viceroy and the Jesuit-Sir Arthur Chichester-Flight of the Ulster THE PLANTATION OF ULSTER BY JAMES I. Plantation of Ulster--Preparing the Way-Six Counties Confiscated-The THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH UNDER CHARLES I., LAUD, AND STRAFFORD. The Established Church United-The Presbyterians Persecuted-Strafford Penal Code-Odious National Comparisons-Cromwell and William III. -The Protestant Interest-The Charter Schools-Pictures of the Rival Churches-Bishop Doyle-George IV. and the Roman Catholic Bishops 208-227 Noble Evangelists-English Missionaries-Evangelism in Dublin-Re- ligious Societies-Public Discussions-Established Church Home. Mis- The Catholic Association-George IV. and the Emancipation Act-The Monster Grievance-The Church Question-Church Temporalities Act- Progress of Presbyterianism-Dr. Cooke--Cooke and O'Connell-Triumph of Dr. Cooke-Political Non-entity of Presbyterians-Liberals in the THE DISESTABLISHED CHURCH-RELIGIOUS EQUALITY. Irish Church Act-New Church Constitution - Revenues of the Freed Church- Revision of the Prayer Book - The Education Question -- 1 CHAPTER I. ANCIENT IRELAND AND ITS HISTORY. WHEN the history of a vanquished nation, which has resisted for centuries, is written by the conquerors, it is not likely to be very impartial. It is still less to be relied on if the writers be ignorant of the language of the people, whom they hate or despise. For those who wish to judge fairly in such a case, it is desirable to hear the accredited organs of the subject race, that they may know what they have to say for themselves. One story is good till the other is told. This maxim should be remembered even where the temptations to misrepresentation are not so very great. If we believe the bundle of affidavits which one party to a suit, some claimant to an estate, lays on the table of the Court, he is the most injured of men. If we believe the bundle, sworn to by equally credible witnesses on the other side, he is the principal agent in a wicked conspiracy, aiming at robbery and sustained by perjury. It is only by comparing the evidence on both sides, and carefully sifting it, that we can hope to arrive at the truth. A difficult task at all times, even to minds the most judicial; but never more difficult than in a case where two such nations as England and Ireland are at issue about the facts of history in the troubled and distant past, touching interests on one side far dearer than those of property. It is amazing with what facility men of superior, and even critical, minds receive worthless testimony when it falls in with their wishes or their prejudices. Not less wonderful is the tenacity with which national animosities grow and flourish from generation to generation, despite the efforts of good men to extirpate them, despite the silent influence of education in changing the nature of the soil in which they are rooted. 'I have observed that every modern historian who has undertaken to write of Ireland commends the country, but disparages B the people. It grieved me to see a nation hunted down by ignorance and malice, and recorded as the scum and refuse of mankind, when, upon strict enquiry they are found to have made as good a figure, and to have signalized themselves in as commendable a manner to posterity, as any people in Europe. The valour of the old Irish, and particularly their fixed constancy in the Christian religion and the Catholic faith, ought to be honourably mentioned as a standard and example for ages that follow.' This has not been written in reply to any living historian, advocating the case of England v. Ireland. It was written 270 years ago by a priest, hiding from persecution in the wood of Aharlow, in the county Tipperary. This was the Rev. Jeoffry Keating, D.D., who devoted himself to the Irish Mission, after spending twenty-three years at the College of Salamanca. During his retreat in the forest he compiled a History of Ireland, from the time of Noah down to the English Conquest by Henry II. His book was composed in Irish, although, as his translator, Mr. Dermod O'Connor, informs us, he was perfectly skilled in the English language. It is an advantage to have such a history, because those of us who have the misfortune to be ignorant of the native tongue are constantly told by Irish antiquaries, even of the present day, that we are thereby disqualified for understanding the ancient history of the country. Dr. Keating himself continually taunts English authors with their manifest unfitness on this very ground. It is true that we may not be able to read the Irish MSS. in which the old chronicles of Erin are written. But we ought certainly to be capable of comprehending the contents of those chronicles when they are translated for us faithfully by those learned Irishmen who were taught Gaelic by their mothers, and who have been studying and teaching it all their lives. Some of the ablest of these men, encouraged and supported by the public, have translated all the most valued of those ancient treasures, accompanied with an immense mass of illustrations; hoping to meet the wish expressed so warmly by Dr. Johnson, the great lexicographer, by giving us a true history of the times when Ireland was the quiet abode of sanctity and learning. If we find these to a large extent worthless as materials of real history, it is |